Control with hand gestures by older users: A review

Abstract

While the quantity and proportion of aging population has been increased rapidly around the world, new means of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), such as control with hand gestures has been introduced and gained its popularity in everyday activities. These trends create opportunities and challenges of gestural user interface design for elderly people. Old people not only increase in chronological age but also relate to various degrees of deterioration in abilities of perception, cognition, and psychomotor. Old population also differs from other age groups in terms of prior experience and knowledge, social status, and interpersonal relationship. In this paper, we first reviewed issues about age and its related characteristics. We then summarize the findings from reviewed literature. Two major applications of gestural user interfaces, “gesture-on-surface” and “gesture-in-midair,” were included in this review. While gesture-on-surface refers to gesture control on touchscreens, gesture-in-midair denotes that hand gestures are performed without touching anything. A discussion was provided at the end of this paper to suggest that gestural interfaces for older users should be simple and intuitive, and with necessary instruction and feedback. To differentiate age-related attributes in future studies was also recommended.